Reasons why I think Summer Glau needs to never act, ever, ever again.

samlicker81-:

millicentbystander:

1.) She can’t. Seriously. Have you ever seen one show or movie where she plays a different character from the character that she ALWAYS plays? It’s not talent if you keep playing the same person over and over again.

2.) I don’t think I’ve honestly ever seen her change her expression from mild boredom. She never smiles, she doesn’t frown. She never cries or begs or gets angry. Nothing.

3.) Her face makes me want to commit mass homicide. She isn’t even that cute. Her face bothers the crap out of me. She just stares. That’s it.

4.) UGH HER FACE. I JUST CAN’T STAND HER.

I’m sorry but What?

I think you need to reevaluate your reasons for thinking she should stop acting. If you don’t like her then that’s fine. But do not bash someone just because you don’t like them. It’s just childish and immature.

Your reasons are just ridiculous and invalid and I know that for a fact because I have seen almost everything she has starred in and I can tell you for a fact that you’re wrong.

The first role she had was as a Prima Ballerina in an episode of Angel called Waiting In The Wings. I assume you’re comparing all her characters to River, since that’s the role she’s most famous for, so let’s compare.

The Prima Ballerina was Russian. River wasn’t. The Prima Ballerina had a back story wherein she could have run away from the theatre with the man of her dreams, but her goal of being a famous dancer blinded her and she turned him down and ended up being a ghost that was forced to dance the same performance over and over for over 100 years. River Tam’s back story is completely different and she played the characters accordingly.

Next, skipping over River, was Tess Doerner in The 4400. Tess Doerner was a schizophrenic who was abducted in 1955. In her first appearance, she was in a mental institution and she had an established rapport with one character named Kevin; to whom she wasn’t at all related to in anyway. Unlike River who’s only real close relationship was with her brother. Another keen point here: River was psychic. None of her characters besides River at this point have been psychic. Tess does have the power to sway others to do what she wants. But other than that, she’s crazy. She eventually is put on meds and begins a loving relationship with Kevin, which is very different from River because as we all know, River has no set romantic relationships. Tess eventually looses her mind again because of her own guilt in the aid of the death of a woman that she thought she was helping to cure, but by her last appearance, she appears mentally stable enough to comfort a girl in the last scene we see her in.

Moving on, there’s Jack Abernathy in the B-Movie Mammoth. Jack Abernathy is a 16 year old girl with a best friend named called Squirrelly, who is not-so-secretly in love with her. She also has a very close relationship with her grandfather, who is a B-Movie aficionado and her relationship with her workaholic father is almost in tatters. For all intents and purposes, Jack Abernathy is a completely normal girl. And she is completely different from any character she’s played so far (excluding her cameo in The Sleepover which I’ve chosen not to include because we don’t learn much about her character at all. Because it’s cameo. Duh.) Jack is strong, sassy and more in need of her father’s love than she’s willing to admit. In the face of danger, she swallows her fear to try to capture the monster, almost sacrificing herself in other to trap it and having to be held back when her grandfather does instead. Unlike River, Jack doesn’t gain her strength to fight only after her grandfather was hurt, she displays it constantly throughout the movie, when she sticks up for herself and Squirrelly during a rave party, when she disses her dad for missing an important part of her birthday and when she takes initiative to speed away from the Mammoth as it chases her, Squirrelly and her Grandfather in the car. She is, at this point, very different from any character she’s ever played because she’s just a normal girl who goes through terrible circumstances.

Up next is Lindsey Goodwin from the 2006 adaptation of The Initiation of Sarah. She’s also a normal girl, or at least appears that way in the beginning. She’s the twin sister of Sarah Goodwin, for which the movie is named and all she wants is to join a sorority and have something be about her for once because she’s been overshadowed by her sister her whole life. Right off the bat, we see a difference between her and River because as fans of Firefly recall, River was in the spotlight in her family because she was so immensely gifted. Lindsey is looking to make her way into the spotlight for once and because of that, she’s used against her sister by the villains of the movie. They transform her, make her feel wanted and like she’s important and because of that, Lindsey turns on her sister, something that River would never do to her brother Simon. However, by the end of the film, she sees the err of her ways and tries to make up for it by killing the main bad-guy in the movie, earning herself a nasty wound. She does gain a new-found sense of self as well and realizes her full potential as “The One”. While she ends up being one of the most important characters in the movie, it does not make her character at all like River because of that. She’s completely in control of her mental faculties and while she is tricked into turning against her sister, she did have the option to say now and didn’t because she wanted to be noticed.

Next, we have Crystal Burns in The Unit. Crystal Burns was a woman who was romantically linked to a military man who wanted to get into the ever exclusive Unit while Crystal would have preferred he stayed away from fighting. Crystal was a waitress and the only one of Summer’s characters besides the Prima Ballerina and Tess Doerner (who read to children at a bookshop she worked at) to actually have a job. And her personality is completely different from any of her characters at this point. Crystal is flaky and rather self-absorbed. While her boyfriend is off working, she’s spending his money on expensive things including a convertible (that she bought to “surprise” him) and an expensive camera that she bought for one of the other wives on the show. And when he’s injured overseas, she doesn’t visit him at all when he’s brought over to the US. She doesn’t go to see him in the hospital at all because she’s afraid and insecure. So instead, she goes out drinking, flirting with other men and ends up having an affair with one of the men in the Unit. She becomes almost obsessed with him in order to stay away from her injured boyfriend and she ends up crying and begging for him to let her stay when he breaks it off with her for the last time. As we all know, River never had an affair with anyone. And when someone she cared about was injured, she did whatever she could to make sure he was alright, which is the opposite of what Crystal did. She is another completely different character from any she’s played by that point and the only thing that links her and Jack together is that they are both normal.

Next, we have Cameron on TSCC. She’s a robot. She is a cybernetic organism. She was made to look like a resistance fighter named Alison Young in order to get close to John Connor. She. Is. A. Machine. I shouldn’t have to explain how she is completely different from River or any character she’s played at this point because it should be obvious. Her emotions are supposed to be stunted. She is supposed to look expressionless. Because she is a ROBOT. However, she also plays Alison Young in an episode called Alison From Palmdale. And I will get into her performance later because that breaches your second reason.

After that, there was Bennett Halverson from Dollhouse. Bennett, while brilliant and very talented, was also flawed. She, in her want to be friends with Caroline, let Caroline use her into order to get into Rossum and ultimately paid the price for it. Caroline abandoned her and Bennett lost use of one of her arms and for that, she held a grudge against Caroline or Echo, as she was known in the dollhouse. This is the first character of Summer’s that we see that has so much anger and hate toward someone that she actually tortures Echo. Summer has never played a character like that before. Bennett was a very dynamic character because while she had the capaicty to hate Caroline so much for what we did, we see a completely different side of her when she’s with Topher. And we also see that she’s very manipulative. While Tess could sway others to do what she wanted, it was mostly unconsciously done on her part until she learned how to control her powers. Bennett doesn’t have any powers. She’s just very, very smart. And Summer plays extremely intellectual characters well. But on top of that, Bennett is awkward and self-conscious and she ends up falling for Topher and vice versa. And together they are both awkward and brilliant until something terrible happens. As something always does in Joss Whedon’s work.

Summer also did a lifetime movie called Deadly Honeymoon. Her character, Lindsey Forrest is a newly wed who always gets what she wants and she knows how to make sure she always gets what she wants. She’s manipulative and driven because she knows what she wants. She’s convincing enough to fool an FBI agent and almost every member of the cruise ship staff she comes in contact with after her husbands disappearance and she plays everyone in order to get what she wants. While she comes off as sweet, her ambitions are revealed by the end of the movie. And she is nothing like any of Summer’s other characters.

Next up is Orwell from The Cape. While we didn’t get to see much character development because the show was canceled prematurely, we do know enough about her to conclude that -yet again- her character is completely different from River. Orwell was a crime blogger. While yes, she was in hiding, it wasn’t because she was an escapee from a Academy that messed with her brain. She ran away because she didn’t want to be like her father, Peter Flemming. Who’s alter ego due to a disease of some sort, I don’t quite remember right now, was the arch-villain named Chess. As we learned later in the first season after Orwell was kidnapped, drugged and almost forced into marriage to a creepy guy who faked his own death, Orwell was most afraid of becoming like her father because, as it turns out, the disease her father has, appears to be hereditary. We learn this when she has a psychotic break due to being drugged. She wouldn’t have had it if she hadn’t been kidnapped and high, so chances are, she would have remained as normal as a grown woman with daddy issues who blogs about crimes and corrupt cops is. While it’s true that she may have drawn on her experience playing River and maybe even Tess, but Orwell is definitely her own type of crazy. She paints her entire apartment white after she withdraws from Vince when he queries as to if she’s alright and afterward, she is quiet, which is very unlike her former self. She is also involved in what she sees as a love triangle between Vince, Vince’s wife and herself because she has developed feelings for him. And while you might say “So, she’s like Crystal!” no, she’s not. Crystal acted on her desires while Orwell does not. Orwell is yet another unique character in her repertoire.

She briefly did a stint on Chuck as Greta. She was an assassin and she was volatile. She was paranoid and violent and on more than occasion she threatened to kill two of the staff members who were following her around. At one point, she actually threatens them with physical harm and aims to kill them, however, she’s told to stand down by Adam Baldwin’s character. This is the first of Summer’s characters who actually does what she’s told because it’s hardwired into her brain to do so. She was a train assassin and while she does have that in common with what the Academy did to River, Greta had absolutely no problem showing off what she could do. And she enjoyed it.

Continuing on, we have Skylar Adams in Alphas. Skylar, while she might be a genius, is not anything like River. Or any of her other characters and you can tell that just by her appearance. She’s spunky and radical and covered in tattoos and clothes that scream “I SHALL NOT CONFORM!” and that’s just what her character is about. She’s an alpha who refused to join the group so she’s monitored and gets caught up in something that she didn’t plan on getting caught up in. And when it all boils down to it, we see that it was in fact, all a misunderstanding. Because it turns out that Skylar has a daughter. None of Summer’s characters have had children up until now. And if her general appearance or personality didn’t set Skylar apart from the others, her having a daughter certainly does.

Last but not least, we have Emily Kovach, her most recent character from Grey’s Anatomy. She’s a nurse at the hospital and is suspected on being involved with Owen. From what we see in the first episode she’s in, she’s hardworking and gets along well with her co-workers. She’s also not aware that she’s being stalked by a paranoid Christina the entire episode. However, in the second episode, we see more of her personality and it’s clear that she’s a very compassionate person. She offers help to Christina on more than one occasion when it’s very clear that Christina doesn’t like her and on top of that, she goes beyond what she’s told in order to try to help the family of a dying patient to help him get over the loss. She even tries to comfort Christina when she sees that she’s overwhelmed and when she’s confronted, she vehemently tries to convince Christina that she’d never, ever take part in an affair. She’s expressive and almost starts crying because she feels awful not only that Christina thinks that of her but that Christina feels that she’s being cheated on. She’s very sympathetic and almost the opposite of River, who was so withdrawn into herself that any sympathy she felt for others, she didn’t try to comfort them, she just felt their pain.

As you can see, Summer’s characters are varied and while they share some characteristic, they’re all different.

Your second reason is that she doesn’t change her facial expression at all. Well, I don’t even need to say anything to prove you wrong on this. I have gifs to back up my argument and I’ll just post them here instead of saying too much.

Summer actually plays Alison Young in Alison from Palmdale, a resistance fighter who was captured by Terminators in order to learn more about the Human Resistance. We see her cry. We actually see when Alison breaks under the pressure. She cries and begs and screams and just feels completely hopeless at one point and we see all of that. Before her death at the hands of her cybernetic doppelganger, we see Alison as she accepts that she’s going to die because she lied. She knew she was going to die. But we finally see her accept it. And she is strong before her death. She faces herself and her death at the same time. So you must have missed that episode if you say she doesn’t cry and beg or get angry.

As for your last reasons, those aren’t reasons. They are opinions. I happen to know a lot of people -including myself- who think that Summer is gorgeous. And that our opinion. Just because you feel that way does not make it a fact.

I realize that you posted that on YOUR blog and it is YOUR blog so you are free to say what you want. But it’s rude to bash someone just because you don’t like them. When you have valid reasons then do what you want because they are valid. But until then, please do not make a post full of hate and actually tag it with that person’s name. Because people who track that tag because we actually like the person take offense to it.